The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals says allegations of racial discrimination made by current and former African-American employees of Nucor Corp.’s plant in Huger, S.C., should be tried as a class-action suit.

The ruling overturns an order by a federal judge in South Carolina that denied class certification. The appellate court says the claims of discrimination in promotions and a racially charged environment show broad enough application to merit the classification.

Nucor has denied all the allegations.

The accusations made by seven current and former African-American employees of the Huger plant were sent to U.S. District Court in South Carolina in 2004 for trial.

The suit contends African-American employees were systematically prevented from learning of and applying for promotion opportunities.

It seeks an order prohibiting such practices at Nucor and correcting conditions to allow African-Americans to hold positions and salaries they would have qualified for. It also asks for back pay and other damages.

The suit says African-Americans were subjected to racial epithets, called “boy” and denied training afforded to white employees. It contends managers at the plant condoned use of the company e-mail system “to send racially demeaning comments and photographs.”

Nucor says its employment decisions were based on “legitimate, non-discriminatory business reasons.” It says the corporation “exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct” racial harassment, but that the employees filing the suit failed to ask for help in the cases cited.

Nucor’s response to the suit says if harassment occurred, it involved only individual actions rather than company policy. And it cites Nucor’s highly decentralized management structure.

Indeed, the trial judge, Judge Weston Houck, found no basis for claims of a hostile work environment at the plant. The appellate court found otherwise.

Judge Roger Gregory, writing the majority opinion for the three-judge panel, goes through some of the allegations. The plant’s radio broadcasts were used to spread pejorative terms, he says. And on one occasion a white worker held up a noose and told an African-American employee it was for him.

“The display of the Confederate flag was pervasive throughout the plant, and items containing Nucor’s logo alongside the Confederate flag were sold in the plant’s gift shop,” he writes in the Aug. 7 ruling. “Indeed, a white supervisor testified that his department manager — who wore a Confederate flag emblem on his hardhat — told him that he would never promote a black employee to supervisor.”

In his order, Gregory says the employees “have certainly presented compelling direct evidence of discrimination, such as denials of promotions when more junior white employees were granted promotions. The question before the district court was not whether the appellants have definitively proven disparate treatment and a disparate impact; rather, the question was whether the basis of appellants’ discrimination claims was sufficient to support class certification.”